[exelius]

How long do you think the API will continue to exist? All of Reddit’s recent moves have shown me they finally realized that much of the DNA of the site (no account verification required, “questionable” speech being semi-tolerated, a dense UX that’s hard to cram ads into, portability, etc.) are what’s preventing them from monetizing. And they’re trying to monetize.

This is exactly the transformation Twitter went through. They changed the UX to make it more advertiser friendly, and when people started using alternate clients to get around it, they cut off the API.

Frankly I think the community will hate it but because it’s really hard to move millions of individual communities, Reddit likely won’t lose too many users.

[Slansitartop]

> Frankly I think the community will hate it but because it’s really hard to move millions of individual communities, Reddit likely won’t lose too many users.

Is that really true? Didn't Reddit get big because Digg made some ill-advised changes and its userbase picked up and moved en masse to Reddit?

[exelius]

Reddit is much, much bigger now than Digg ever was; and there’s no viable platform for most to move to. Its communities are decentralized, and moderation is a function of the network, so Reddit as it exists is effectively the only thing holding them together.

[kalcode]

>no account verification required

I keep hearing this but I made an account recently with no email verification. Recently as in one week ago. I put in a no email address actually. YOu can go sign up right now, leave the email field empty and hit next, you can do the whole sign-up process without an email.

[exelius]

Oh I know you can still do this; but the UX is deceptive about it. And one day they may just force the field to be “required”.

Anonymous posting is the core feature of Reddit, so if they kill that the site is dead. It’s also Reddit’s biggest problem with advertisers on two fronts: it prevents them from linking out to external DMPs for most users and it makes it easy to post content that is offensive to advertisers.

[catach]

> a dense UX that’s hard to cram ads into

Not that it affects your overall point, but it's worth noting both that the new design has a rather nice 'compact' view, and that their new ad placement method (right in the post stream) could have been done with the old design.